I hurt my hand.
This is a tingly written post as I am recovering from some nerve irritation in my RIGHT hand.
As a right handed person, I love my right hand and I am so grateful for all that I have been able to do with it.
I will not go into detail about how I obtained my injury, I just wanted to jot down some musings and activities I have been pursuing while resting my favoured limb.
I have radial nerve neuropraxia. It feels like my hand has constant pins and needles (but not terribly), occasional numbness and my hand just isn’t operating how it used to. The doctor said it should be fine within a few days, dr Google tells me it could be a few months (siiigh), but it SHOULD get better. My hand has gone to sleep and it’s not ready to wake up yet.
I am so glad I had a wave of motivation wash over me last weekend and I started the week by making a bunch of funky earrings for my upcoming online shop and market stall. The work that goes into making my jewellery piecing includes working with pliers, tiny, fiddly things and occasionally a drill. This is far from how I hurt my hand, I just needed to acknowledge that I have been on the grind getting my “business” together and my right hand has been integral to this process. For this to come to a stop has been… frustratingly difficult.
I hurt my hand 4 days ago. I have since been “training” my left hand and strengthening my almost non-existent ambidextrous skills. I had this great idea that I wanted to make some funky bunting for my market stall, this includes some embroidery on some of the flags. I have now embroidered some (very simple) designs left handed. Woo!
I used to do life drawing classes a few years ago (I will have to write a blog post about that experience another time) and I want to mention a warm up exercise we used to do in the class- drawing with your non-dominant hand. This is a practice that I still use to this day, even sometimes subconsciously. Using the non-dominant hand can really free up the sense of perfection in any artwork, and I love the perfectly imperfectness of abstract art. So my left hand has been used occasionally to draw intentionally squiggly lines. Drawing lines on fabric, with less than cooperative markers, left handed, has been tricky, but they are intentionally wonky lines, so that has helped.
I am also extremely grateful that I can still use my right hand, it just feels quite uncomfortable. I was really hoping I would sleep this injury off and by Friday the tingle would be lighter and over the weekend it would be gone. But alas, Sunday evening is upon us and my hand still tingles like the Sleeping Beauty she is, or the Rapunzel getting pricked by the needle. I have been told to rest my hand as much as possible, and to wear a wrist brace to assist with this. So as much as I’ve said I am still grateful to be able to use my right hand, it does have an “out of order” ticket on it too. This is slowing down my great wave of motivation. This is making me frustrated as my already huge list of things I want to do and make is getting increasingly longer and my ability to tackle these projects is inhibited.
I am doing my best.
I don’t want to be a grey cloud on this gorgeous day, so I have made this post as light hearted as possible.
A record to be kept on my blog of this (hopefully) speed bump on my journey.
I am not stopping though, no no no, my left hand will have to pick up where the right one left off. As much as it can 😆.
if you
Much love and sunshine!
Happy healing to me (and you if you’re healing too).
X, Jacky B